Kolb Experiential Learning Cycle C2: Reflective observation: organise structured reflection on the experience

After the experience, learners are given time and a structure to observe and reflect on it from several perspectives, individually and in conversation with others, before drawing conclusions. Reflection needs protected space and time and is crowded out by pressure to act; it is deepened by deliberately taking other viewpoints, by empathy, and by information skills of sense making, gathering and analysing information. Kolb treats reflection as the internal transformation of experience and warns that reflection cut off from the rest of the cycle turns in on itself; he distinguishes spontaneous reflection, critical reflection that reframes assumptions against a framework, and reflection integrated with action (reform, or praxis).